


Room To Bend

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Category: Video Blogging RPF, Youtube RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Bittersweet Ending, Blood, Boundaries, Caretaking, Caring, Concern, Discovery, Exhaustion, Explanations, Fear, Fear of Death, Friendship, Guilt, He is a magical mender of wounds, Help, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marvin has more magic than what he does onstage, Mid-Canon, Minor Character Death, Multiple Selves, Numbness, Panic, Panic Attacks, Shame, Sleep Deprivation, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-15 00:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14780333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: After he loses one of his younger patients, Schneep suffers an anxiety attack.





	Room To Bend

It didn’t affect him often—at least not to the point where he gave any visible indication of it. Most of the time it was just loitering in the back of his mind like a bee knocking against the inside of a jar. It was a persistent  _tink-tink-tink_  that he could usually drown out, given he put in the effort.

Some days, however, there was no more room to bend. He didn’t have any more hands to cover his ears and stifle the noise. His hands were frozen under the tap water. He couldn’t help but watch with numb fascination; the water was clean when it left the faucet, cloudy red when it reached the drain. Sometimes it didn’t occur to him just how much blood he came into contact with.

Today had been a long, stressful day, but that wasn’t new to him. The soreness and exhaustion burning through every muscle in his body were part of the job. He just needed to lie down and stare at the ceiling for a while…decompress.

The faucet squeaked as he turned it off and then there was a moment or two of deep, unbroken silence. It was then that the fear crashed in, sweeping him off his feet and onto the floor. Gravity increased a thousandfold, weighing his body down, caving him in on himself. All of the air fled his lungs as the room closed in, glaring at him, touching him, pinning pressure down on him like he was a stress ball—squeezed and never released. The bee in the back of his mind had broken free of the jar and the buzz rang in his ears, made his nerves tingle.

Again he saw the blood on his hands—so much blood, so much suffering, so much guilt—It was all his fault.  _His fault, his fault, his fault, his fault_ —

He remembered all of their faces, pasty white and still, expressionless. He remembered the range of color in their eyes—brown, green, blue, gray, amber, staring back at him, preserved like frosty glass in their last moments—He couldn’t breathe, he was choking on their blood. Panting and whimpering, he dragged his fingernails along the fabric of his coat and rocked faintly back and forth, trying to ground himself, but he couldn’t feel anything. Even when he curled his fingertips in and his nails bit into his arm with enough force to bruise, he couldn’t feel  _anything_.

 _My fault. My fault. I got her killed. She was just a little girl, she was just—she wanted to be a designer. She was meant to live. Failure. Fault. Failure_.

The tears were scalding on his cheeks. Since when was he crying? Every hoarse sob stole more of his breath until he finally thrashed, banging the back of his head against the cabinets behind him and slamming his feet down hard against the linoleum. The short bursts of pain let his chest expand for just a moment, as if he’d jumped out of his own skin, before his clothes crawled back over him and  _tightened_. This was it; he was being strangled, smothered. Starved of oxygen, hyperventilating to no avail, he was going to die too.

“Schneep?”

 _No. No, no, please, no, he couldn’t do this in front of them_.

“Schneep!” The person at the doorway strode toward him, hurried footsteps echoing. Blue, black, green, and white entered his kaleidoscope field of vision and he couldn’t help but sob in relief and shame when Marvin eventually clawed his way through the blur. If it had to be anyone to see him like this, he’d want Marvin, even if he repaid him by flinching back as soon as he reached toward him.

“Too—too much,” he choked out, to which Marvin nodded hastily, understanding lacing through the concern.

“Okay, I won’t touch you…Just tell me what happened. Can you do that? Talk to me.”

Audibly struggling to swallow, Schneep leaned his head back against the cabinet again, chest heaving as his hands fell to his thighs, scraping against them for purchase. “Lost her. I—I-I lost little girl…She died in sleep. I wasn’t there and I sh- _should’ve_  been!”

Cursing quietly, Marvin shifted forward again, clearly wanting nothing more than to grab him but resisting for his request. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Schneep, but I know you did everything you could. You always do.”

“Nothing…helped.”

“ _You_  did,” the magician retorted just as easily, unwavering. “You may not think so, but you did. I know you. You probably visited her every day, didn’t you? You tried to make her smile and laugh and you reminded her that she was loved. You promised to take good care of her and you  _did_ , for all the time she had left. You’re not helpless. This is temporary, Schneep…You need to breathe.”

“Can’t. I can’t, I can’t. I  _can’t_ —”

“You can. Breathe with me, okay?” The hand that disobeyed and settled lightly on Schneep’s shin wasn’t as oppressive as the doctor had expected. It squeezed gently. “Breathe now. Four seconds.” Schneep’s attempted breath was more like a thin wheeze, but Marvin nodded encouragingly nonetheless, slowly easing his grip. “And out—same four seconds.”

Lowering his head, Schneep pinned tear-filled eyes on Marvin’s hand. It was an anchor, its grip ebbing and flowing, guiding each breath through the pounding waves of anxiety. It held him above the surface, kept him from drowning. Hissing shakily, he began tracing the path of the burns visible on Marvin’s wrist, focusing on the pattern.  _Patterns. Scars_. Always the same, no matter how much they faded. He could trust in their familiarity. Scars were something he was just as familiar with as blood. Scars meant healing. Not forgetting, but healing. The tears only spilled faster at the thought, but the panicked buzz was starting to recede into exhaustion. The bee was wandering back into its jar.

“There we go…” Marvin soothed, noticing the tears but saying nothing. He had to keep him focused on breathing. “There we go…You’re gonna be okay.” Schneep managed a slow, tiny nod, and Marvin squeezed his leg one last time before gradually peeling it away, holding it out. “Can I help you now?”

He had already helped more than Schneep could ever thank him for, but he could start by nodding again. Once he did, Marvin drew him away from the cabinet and into a delicate hug, as if he were made of paper that would crumple under too much pressure. He only dared to tighten it once Schneep actively curled into his arms, hiding his face against his chest

“I’ve got you,” the older Ego murmured lowly, his voice rumbling comfortingly under Schneep’s ear. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

For reasons unknown, Marvin had always put out more body heat than the others. With his arms wrapped around him like a steadying harness, Schneep couldn’t help but melt into the warmth and the faint scent of jasmine and almond butter. As the tension eased out of him inch by inch, he kept counting in his head: one, two, three, four— _in_ —one, two, three four— _out_.

He had to keep breathing. Right now, he was more aware of that than anything else in this world. He had to keep breathing for her sake.


End file.
